And What Shall I Sing?
by Fluitare
Summary: A series of drabbles; a writing exercise. The briefest of moments and the smallest catches of breath on the wind.
1. Echo

_Echo_

"Éowyn."

It's been a long time since she's been anything but Éowyn, a long time since she's heard her own name.

She doesn't know anymore if she would hear someone calling for Lôriel, hear it the way that makes her ears a little keener to catch it.

She hears Westron name that way now, finds herself thinking that she is Éowyn. Maybe she is.

Lôriel belongs to Rohan, to endless fields beneath a sapphire sky and proud stallions all fire and beauty.

In the empty white walls of Minas Tirith, someone is calling for Éowyn.

* * *

_These Halcyon Days_

"Farewell," he whispers against her hair.

She wants to say something - No, don't go, or, I love you, or perhaps merely, Farewell, then.

They are propped against a broad, rough tree-trunk, in the last lingering heat of summer. Too soon, Estel will leave to fulfill another part of his intricate and bothersome destiny.

She doesn't want him to go, not really, not while the leaves dapple them in filtered sunlight, and the golden pollen coats the meadows, and the lazy bees still hum their liquid song.

But there are no words to tell him this, so she does not.

* * *

_Under a Swift Sunrise_

"Namárië," she whispered to him softly.

He was still holding her hands, and she could imagine their silhouettes, still and proud, leaning away from each other and into the wind, on a great hill against the sky. She had come to die, but now she could see it was hardly death.

It was just one more door, and the lock had fallen away at last, and beyond it was Estel.

Legolas wanted her to come with him over the sea.

You can't die, Evenstar, he had said, You have to live.

And she had said, I've already done that.

* * *

_Counterpoint_

"Wait," she begs him, pressing harder against the cold fingers within her hand.

There is no response. The grey eyes do not open, and his heartbeat is barely a flutter.

Even as she holds his hand so hard that her knuckles have turned white, he is slipping away, his mortal human soul. His note was sustained for a long time, an old and kingly theme of the Ainulindalë, but he is leaving her all alone.

Arwen has never been the melody, and she does not want it.

She belongs in counterpoint, and now the wind has snatched the song away.

* * *

_Altars of Blood_

"Love," Elrond said solemnly.

Arwen bowed her head to hide her bitterness, and turned away.

He spoke again, but she was no more than a flash of white and black in the distance.

An eternal struggle in the stars, and scales untippable but with blood. A blood-price, a sacrificial lamb, and she this age's coin.

She did not question the truth, for it was always so, and Galadriel herself had foreseen it.

Her immortal fëa the cost, and the silver knife of slaughter to bind herself to a mortal man.

A small price, in truth, for all the world.

* * *

_The Morning Queen_

"Galadriel."

She is an explosion of golden sunlight breaking over the hills. There is no peace behind soft clouds or rain falling to earth. In daybreak and sunset both, she is fiery and unequivocal, harsh hot light against darkness.

The halfling is transfixed, holding the ring, and she hears promises: She will be the morning queen, and night gone forever.

But there is another voice in her mind, and he tempers her, his silver voice like rain, and he calls her as Sauron is afraid to. Galadriel.

Is that who she is?

She turns Frodo away.

She will remain Galadriel.

* * *

_High Tongue_

"Quenya?" she said.

Legolas laughed, and replied in kind.

Between accents and drawn-out vowels, their Sindarin was unintelligible. But Quenya was precise and accentless, with the careful pronunciation of a learned language.

So they walked through the summer together, and once, she reached out, as if to take his hand.

Undómiel was wise and fair, and he could learn to love her.

But he looked at her, and he knew it would be then as now, beautiful but uneasy, never the effortless song of a mother tongue.

And he shook his head, and smiled, and took his hand away.


	2. The End Of All Things

_The End of All Things_

She alone of all the elves looked back before taking the last step from the woods - the safe, familiar woods; her woods.

When she turned once more, there was before her a shifting sea of grasses, bowing down before the wind, and the brilliant blue of an endless sky curving down to meet it.

Far, far away was an eternal blue ocean, crashing and breaking against the rocks, calling to her with a fierce, turbulent sea-song, where white gulls fly between endless sky and sea.

It was wild and beautiful and strange, and it hurt her heart to see.


	3. And What Then Shall I Sing?

_And What Then Shall I Sing?_

"Greenleaf—"

"No."

"Greenleaf, hear me."

"I can't."

"I know."

"Arwen! Maybe I don't want to climb a tree."

"You're a wood elf."

"Lies."

"Everyone thinks you are, and that's enough for me."

"And everyone thinks I'm Estel's friend—that should be enough for you, too."

"You are his friend."

"Then why has his wife dragged me to a far-away tree?"

"We're in a garden."

"Why?"

"To say—to say farewell."

"Don't weep, Evenstar. Ours was not a love meant to be."

"Will you sing for me, Greenleaf? To greet the dawn?"

"And what then shall I sing?"

"Sing of us."


	4. Temporalis

_Temporalis_

Parchment crumples beneath his fingertips, his ink-stained hands sifting papers.  
There is a drawing Elessar wants to find, a childish one, a roughly outlined flower coloured in a smear of pink. He remembers placing it here, before it vanished beneath masses of paperwork, and, when it fails to appear, his searching becomes increasingly desperate. He accidentally knocks a treatise off the desk, page one following two following three in a long unbroken stream.  
It has sunk, perhaps forever, into an endless abyss.  
There was a girl who made it, his daughter.  
The paper remains, he hopes.  
For she does not.


	5. Caught

_Caught_

"Elessar."

"Legolas."

"You saw us, last night."

"No."

"Heard, then."

"Aye."

"Estel—"

"_Why?_"

"Oh, Estel."

"Tell me."

"You sound kingly, Estel. That's very good."

"Tell. Me."

"Be iest lîn. Our fëar are bonded."

"Arwen is my wife."

"You are not elf-kind, Estel. Her fëa cannot reach you."

"You and she are together, then."

"No."

"But—"

"We are soul-mates, now. But never mates."

"Because of me."

"She loves you, Estel. Our binding was an accidental seeking of a fëa, and I was near."

"And you are bound against your will to a mortal who loves another?

"Yes."


	6. Deep Into the Earth

_Deep Into the Earth_

It's so very cold. Are you cold, Estel?

Fragile human. You always complained that my skin was too cold. Elves don't get cold. I'm not cold if you aren't.

The grass is dying now, pulling away, deep into the earth. You did, too, Estel, but I'll find you again. I'll be the wind, if you want, and I'll fall to this dusty ground like rain, and I'll take you up from the depths, back to my arms, to soft rain and starlight.

I would do anything for you, Estel.

I love you so, so much.

Don't have left me forever.


	7. Raindrops

****

_Raindrops_

"Nanar?"

"Hello, little elfling."

"Nanar, where adar?"

"He's not here right now."

"Where?"

"He—he's gone."

"Where?"

"Across a river and a sea, beyond the edge of Arda."

"Adar!"

"I'm sorry, little elfling. Estel isn't coming back."

"Dust. Where adar?"

"Yes, the ground is dusty. It hasn't rained in a long time. Perhaps it will rain now."

"Adar."

"Remember him, my child. You're so young, but you must remember him; the king and the man, the father and the husband. You aren't too young, are you?"

"No!"

"Like that, little one. Just like that."

"Rain!"

"No, elfing, not rain. Tears."


	8. White Queen

_White Queen_

His beard is rough, and his clothing chafes her skin. These days, everything scrapes against her, as if everything is off-balance. The world feels wrong.

Éowyn hates this place.

These cold towers and colourless walls, the dull ache of pain so familiar that she feels lost without it.

She is empty.

She sought Aragorn, and he turned away from her, and there is nothing left.

Faramir sought his family, and they have all left him.

Their love was doomed to die.

And they are both broken, and the shards are grating against each other, and they hurt all the more.


	9. The Last Great Light

_The Last Great Light _

She was so beautiful, his Arwen. Not his, never his, but beautiful all the same.

A perfect statue, with marble skin always cold to touch.

Then she became mortal. She felt to him like she was burning, like Estel; these mortal humans whose fëar burned to heat their skin.

Now her hands are cold again, and her lips are pale once more. She lies quiet in a tomb of white stone, the last elf-light extinguished from this world besides his own.

But he had always known that she would leave someday, for she has never been his at all.


	10. Between the Lines

_Between the Lines_

"Mae govannen, Aragorn," she says. And he sees how her eyes light, and he is not a Dúnadan for nothing.

. . .

"You can't," he says.

"Watch me," she says.

"No."

"It is mine to give to whom I will," she says, and he hears the words she left unsaid.

He takes the jewel.

. . .

"What do you sing?" he says.

"'Tis the Lay of Luthien, an elf-maiden who loved mortal Beren."

"What happened to her?" he whispers, although he half-knows already.

A long while passes. "She died."

And he could read between the lines, but for now he chooses not to.


	11. Sunset

_Sunset_

It began, like a sunset, in beauty.

"Arwen! Come down!"

Arwen, who was perched on a tree-branch, looked down at her husband. "Shall I jump?" she said mischievously.

He grinned. "If you want."

"No promise to catch me," Arwen noted.

Aragorn looked up, laughter gone. "Arwen Undómiel, I will always catch you."

* * *

But Time heavily weighed on him, and passed lightly over her.

* * *

"My hope," she whispered to him on his bier, holding his hand to her lips.

He smiled at her. "My evenstar," he said, but it dissolved into coughing.

And it ended, like a sunset, in utter darkness.


	12. Hold Me

_In the End_

"Dear sister," Legolas says, cradling her in strong arms, warmth against her chill.

She smiles up at him, a smile heartbreaking in its uncertainty. "You still...?" she whispers.

"Still love you?" His words come tumbling out, as if he cannot reassure her fast enough. "I will always love you, Evenstar. While I hold you and when you are gone."

"I held you in the beginning, you know," she says. "When your mother..."

"I know," he says.

"Will you hold me in the end?"

"I will," he says.

And he does not have the heart to tell her that he is.


	13. Sacred Vows

_Sacred Vows (100)_

Her lips form words, but Aragorn cannot hear. He holds her hand tighter. Arwen smiles.

_—Where you go, I will go —_

He did not want these wedding vows.

_—And where you stay, I will stay —_

But Arwen insisted, and at last he realized. This is not despair in this world but hope in a better.

_—Your people will be my people —_

This is not fear but love.

_—And your God will be my God —_

So he returns her smile, and as she speaks, he begins to hear.

"And where you die, I will die, and there will I be buried."


	14. Of Humanity

_Of Humanity_

His cry shatters the still air. "Estel! Brigands!"

Estel is already wheeling his horse around, unsheathing Andúril.

Legolas fires arrow after arrow, and bodies fall heavily from tree-limbs to the ground.

"Legolas!" Estel shouts, and he whirls instinctively, slashing the throat of the man behind him before even seeing his face. Is it only once his knives are painted scarlet that he sees it is a_ child._

"Legolas?" Estel pants. He is standing above their leader, the last one alive, the one who _corrupted_ this no-more-than-a-boy.

"Legolas?"

But Legolas cannot respond, lost so deep in the darkness of humanity.


	15. Green Glass Beads

_Green Glass Beads_

In long-deserted woods, there are two statues made of marble. Beside them is a bench, and there sits a slight figure wreathed in sun-bright hair.  
"Hello, princess," he says.  
One statue is a man noble and grim, and the other a woman of exquisite, unearthly beauty.  
"You gave him everything," he says to the woman as if she can hear him. "And you gave me this." He is holding a fragile bracelet, like a child's toy.  
At dusk, he departs.  
In the forest, on one marble wrist, there is a string of green glass beads, sparkling in the dying sun.


	16. And It Is Us

_And It Is Us_

Last lines blatantly stolen from HPMOR. I'm sorry, LessWrong. It inspired me.

"Legolas," she weeps. "Oh, Legolas."

"Ssh," he says, fingers threading clumsily through her hair. "Ssh, Arwen, it'll be all right."

She looks up at him through tear-stained eyes, childish and trusting. "Will it?" she says, like she wants so very badly to believe in a happy ending. "But I feel as if the stars are dark."

He presses one chaste kiss to her forehead. "My dear," he says softly. "There is no light in Sauron's darkness, nor in all the wilds of Arda. But there need not be.

"There is a light in this world, Evenstar, and it is us."


End file.
